Paedomorh
by tami3
Summary: Dean kills an Aztec god of youth. What happens after gives Sam a turn at that parenting gig. Kiddy!Dean. Some gross stuff.


Paedomorph

"I'm going to kill it."

"Dean, no."

"Sam, I'm going to kill that thing. It's a big ugly fucker and it just tried to eat your head."

"Dean, don't-"

Too late. Dean turns the corner and blasts the wolf-sized slimy pink lizard thing into slurry. It apparently doesn't have vocal cords because it just flaps its funny gap mouth with rows of small clear teeth slung low around its gums. But Dean knows just because it doesn't make some awful dramatic death screech doesn't mean that it's not a monster. Anything with wriggling red fingers around its head definitely goes on the "shoot" list.

"Dean!" Sam is hot on his heels, skidding into the exhibit hall from the museum lobby. His jaw drops in dismay when he sees fresh guts crusting the junky pots and rocks on display around the room. "Those were millennia-old Aztec temple artifacts on loan from Mexico!" he blurts out. "You could have just started an international incident! This could be General Santa Anna's wooden leg all over again!"

Dean is grinning triumphantly, brushing off a smear of carrion on his sleeve.

"Whosa whatcha now?" he says jauntily, slinging his sawed-off over his shoulder. The salt rounds had been put aside for the more traditional buckshot when they'd found out it was, what was the word? Oh yeah, corporeal. "Oh come on, Sammy, would you have rather grown an extra hand out of your forehead? The thing was cursed."

Very true. Museum staff and patrons had been curiously sprouting extra fingers and toes out of minor wounds for the past week—even in places where digits didn't normally grow. Like children's scraped knees. It'd started happening shortly after a famously sealed Aztec mystery sarcophagus had been found with its lid off.

Sam groans. It's his "I am disappointed in you" tradition every time Dean shows off his irreverence for anything not related to killing, eating, or fucking. "Can't believe this." Sam grumbles. "Would it have killed dad to teach you some respect for culture? I've got a fricking pillager on my hands."

"Pillagers get the job done, Sammy." Dean says heartily from the floor, where he's hoisting up the dead critter. It's light enough that he only needs to sling in across one shoulder. That leaves him one arm free to smack Sam on the back to get him moving. Sam cries out in disgust because he knows Dean is doing it intentionally to slather blood on his shirt. Sam probably wants to take his time to carefully look into the scene, make sure nothing's missed. Can't be helped though. Dean's been pushing Sam out the door when he's in a hurry their whole lives. It's a perk of big brotherhood.

"Get a move on. You can preach whatever you want when you have your own kids." Dean orders him. He ruffles Sam's hair with his gross hands for good measure.

* * *

It's not like Sam hasn't been trying to teach Dean lessons about being a little more civilized. Dean's lovable enough but he's dead weight in the manners department. He eats the entire platter of mini-sandwiches and chews open-mouthed at funeral stakeouts and everything. But it's too little, too late. Dean always puts his feet up on the table and smirks at Sam's sigh.

"You can't teach an old dog new tricks, Sammy," he always says.

The morning after the museum gig grounds that excuse.

Dean trots out from the shower and interrupts Sam poking around the Wikipedia article about General Cortez by delivering a solid smack to the back of his head.

"Ow!" Sam jerks around in his chair and glares. "What was that for?"

"Dude, I've told you before, stay away from my stuff!"

"I haven't been anywhere near your stuff!"

"Oh yeah you have, Sam, unless you've got another reason why my best shirt's so stretched out it doesn't even fit anymore."

Sam stands up. Dean looks up. Way up.

"Uh, Dean?" Sam says to the top of Dean's head, somewhere below his collarbone.

"…Yeah Sam?"

"Why did you dye your hair blond?"

* * *

Dean hasn't had blond hair since John shaved his head when he was ten and it grew back brown. He hasn't been under a hundred pounds and four feet since then either, but by noon he's naked under a tent of a button up shirt and freaking out about why Sam can't run a search engine more efficiently. Faster than the rate he's shrinking, preferably.

"So the thing you splattered all over the wall was a giant axolotl, apparently with more magic powers than we thought." Sam pauses. "I did tell you not to shoot," he can't help lecturing.

"A little more research, a little less bitch lip, Sam." Dean snaps from his island on the bed. Normally Sam gets snippy right back, but this time his mouth quavers with suppressed laughter at Dean's foul-mouthed grade-school timbre. Dean notices, glowers, and dives into the sheets to hide.

"Wild axolotls are unique to central Mexico, the same place our mystery box came from. They're almost extinct in their native environment, but they're popular as pets and research animals—limb regeneration being their ability of interest, which covers the nature of the museum curse. And they're famous for being neotenic." Sam says to the Dean-lump.

"Sam. If you know you need to explain it, why do you wait for it?"

"Neotenic, meaning their physical appearance remains larval their entire life."

"Larval? Did I hear you say larval?" Dean asks somewhat hysterically from under the comforter. "Am I going to turn into that fugly maggotty thing I slagged?"

Sam makes a noise of impatience in the back of his throat. "That's just a general term. The axolotl's a salamander. Its larval stage is closer to…a tadpole, I guess. And anyways." He gets up and pokes a little at Dean's big head and skinny arms through the sheets like he's a suspicious organ on a coroner's table. "You seem to be reverting to a younger form within the parameters of your own species. Thank God."

"No. No, not thank God!" Dean shouts, bursting out and flailing away Sam's jabbing. "This is fucked up, Sam! I'm going to look like this forever? This is even worse than that warlock! Old dudes can still score and drink and drive, but…but how the hell am I going to live like this? My life is OVER!"

"Calm down, Chicken Little." Sam chides him, smacking him soothingly between the shoulder blades. "No one's saying you're going to have to. We've fixed worse." Dean scowls but Sam is already fishing out the keys from his pants, discarded on the floor when Dean walked right out of them.

"For now, let's work on getting you some new clothes."

* * *

It sounds like a practical plan but it's executed poorly. Sam somehow overlooks how it looks to be ushering a young boy dressed in nothing but a flannel shirt, clearly at least pants-less underneath. When they get into the children's section of an outdoor mall's Old Navy outlet, it turns out that neither of them knows how to shop for kid's clothes, either.

"Dean, what size are you?" Sam mutters as he flips through a rack of miniature jeans. "Fine." He says to Dean's stare of malicious blankness. "What's your weight, then?"

Dean shrugs uncooperatively next to him. He scratches his bare leg with his toes.

"Cut that out!" Sam snaps crossly. "Help me out here. I don't want to do this any more than you do." Dean's about to moodily reach for his best guess, but a sales person materializes from behind a row of animal prints

"Just a minute sir." He confronts Sam. His tie, dress shirt, and black slacks all scream "managerial". "I'm afraid I can't allow your child to walk around the store dressed like that."

For a minute, Sam looks like a dog that's been hit over the head with a newspaper for something it didn't do. Then he turns red. "This is my brother," he says as soon as he's able. Dean glares up mutinously at the pair of them as the bastard gives Dean a single lofty glance before turning his attention back to Sam.

"Regardless, I'm going to have to request that you leave. You and your brother are welcome to return when he's dressed more appropriately."

"Wait. He uh, doesn't have any other clothes. That's why we're here." Dean sees the cogs in Sam's head struggling to get going. "They were um. Lost in a fire." He winces at Dean's reproachful look. "Camp fire," he amends. "We started it too close to the tent."

"…Right." The Old Navy employee carefully avoids asking for further details, like why Dean might have been naked during time of said fire, and why Sam's own clothes were fireproof. "Well then, please take your time. But he can't be walking barefoot in here, so I suggest starting with shoes."

Dean miserably plods alongside Sam, the mirrored support beams keeping him full aware of how stupid he looks in nothing but his oversized shirt and a pair of strap-on sandals. Sam had plucked them from the nearest shoe display to keep the store workers happy. Sam insists that he go to the fitting room with the first shirt and pants he picks out, but at least after the first set he knows what numbers to look for and doesn't have to go back.

After an hour and several whispered fights ("I am NOT wearing tighty-whities!" "They don't make boxers in your size!") Dean exits the store in tiny versions of the clothes uselessly packed in his army bag back at the hotel room. Sam follows him with a bulging blue shopping bag. He'd insisted on two of everything, and a sweater because "What if you get cold?"

They go to lunch, and Dean grumpily kicks at the table stand with his new size two and a half sneakers, because Sam had weirdly said something about how it wasn't a good idea to only have a pair of open-toe shoes. The craggy waitress (red-head with gray roots coming out) barely nods at Sam's request for a turkey Cobb sandwich, but she beams at Dean's indecision with the menu in his hands.

"And what'll you have, angel?" she croons.

Dean gets called a lot of things, but never that. That's what he calls the sweeter girls he chats up, and Sam once in a while when he wakes up looking and smelling like a grizzly. He'll have to rethink his usage of the term because it doesn't feel that good being on the receiving end.

In the meantime, she points the end if her blue ballpoint pen at Dean's face with a wrist flick that's probably meant to be charming but is really just annoying. "You've got a fine-looking boy there." She informs Sam while admiring Dean. "He'll be breaking hearts in no time, if you don't mind me saying so. He get those golden curls from his mama?"

Curls? _Curls? _It's humid, and the ends might be turning up a bit, but Dean Winchester does not have _curls_ like some Little Lord Fauntleroy.

"Yeah, I guess." Sam answers, getting more and more rattled. The old hag eyes him a bit too before smiling indulgently. "He's got your eyes, though. Don't worry, I'm sure he's got some of his big strong daddy in him."

At this point Dean decides to take protective big brother initiative and hisses at her. She jumps and almost drops her notepad. She locks eyes with him and for a moment they stare down. Then Dean grudgingly relents and mumbles: "I'll have the double cheeseburger and a extra large side of fries, thanks."

"Hold on ma'am." Sam calls after her as she starts to sashay off. "Make that a single cheeseburger and small fries." She nods curtly and disappears into the kitchen.

"Sam!" Dean exclaims in horror because _Sam just ordered for him. _Sam makes his too-often-seen "for your own good" face. "You're like, fifty pounds," he says. "And I know you never leave anything on your plate. You're going to vomit on clothes I just paid for."

"We paid for." Dean reminds him irritably, but Sam just unzips his bag and plonks his laptop on the Formica surface.

Dean's down to last sip of his kiddy-sized soda when Sam mutters a half-certain

"Yahtzee."

"What'dya got, Sam?"

Sam quirks up one eyebrow, which is ominous because that's usually Dean's tic. And Dean's only does it when some bad shit's going down, but it's still kind of funny because it's something that will bug the hell of Sam.

"You're not going to like it." Sam warns him, and manages to keep his expression mostly serious.

* * *

We're going to fly to Mexico and catch a native axolotl from Lake Xochimilco in the week of the full moon and fly it back and commit it to the chamber to restore the Azteca god of youth Dean's chubby baby-fat loaded ass. Okay fine, no, he's actually on the lean side for a kid, but point stands.

"Come on, you've been on a plane before." Sam coaxes him. He's a mite aggressive about his persuasion, dragging his big brother along by the sleeve of his sweater. (Fine, the airport's AC is on the excessive side and he did sneeze and sniffle a little bit in the check-in line before Sam wrestled him into his new hoodie.) Sam's attitude of half-sadistic sympathy gets quickly eaten away by how Dean isn't being funny scared about flying. That was how it worked when he was a two hundred pound grown man. He's being bratty scared.

"Just…do what you did before, and you'll be fine."

"What did you think I was taking swigs of out of that flask? Hawaiian punch? That was one hundred percent pure liquid courage, man."

"Well, that's not an option, so can you make do with the Hawaiian punch?"

"You're adorable. You know what was especially cute? You buying the tickets, putting the Impala in a garage, and hailing a cab all without asking me. Seriously, I melted."

Sam grabs his hood and yanks him back from the metal detector because he forgot to take off his shoes. As Sam needs longer to replace his metal accessories (his belt, watch, and wallet, all of which Dean also had about two days ago) Dean becomes increasingly fidgety.

"Come on, Sam." He whines as he stumbles after Sam's long legged-strides. He gets a little leg-locked when they enter the glass corridors and he can actually see the planes lifting off to their impending doom. Sam unmercifully seizes him by the hand and yanks him along, swinging his carry-on fully onto his other shoulder. "What say you and me make a stop at the bar and you get me something to ease my nerves? You'll do that for your big brother, won't you?" Goddamn, why is Sam immune to the puppy eyes? Dean's spent almost thirty years making concessions to the soulful pleading looks he's making now.

"Are you kidding me?" Sam refuses him in his exultant cruelty.

"No way in hell, Sam. I can't do this sober." Dean goes on his heels and leans his weight against Sam's death grip.

"I'm not buying you alcohol, I'll get arrested! Dean, our flight's in twenty minutes! The next one's not for another eight hours, and we've only got two days to look for this thing before the full moon's gone!"

"Then you're getting on it alone, because I'm not stepping foot on that death trap!"

"I can't just ditch a little kid in an airport and fly to Mexico! We don't even have any money for you to get by while I'm gone, and no one's going to let a six-year-old use a credit card-"

"I can fucking live on the street!" Dean suggests, tone striking hysterical notes.

"I can't—you don't—"

"Boarding for flight F16, Mexico City," the female announcer declares smoothly through the PA. Sam smacks himself in the forehead.

"I don't have the time for this" is what he says.

"Wha?" Dean babbles as Sam hooks an arm around his waist. He finds himself getting lifted off his feet, then juggled sideways like a piece of carry-on luggage as Sam begins to walk briskly towards their terminal.

"Argh—get off me you fucking asshole, I'm gonna-" Dean grunts, his high-topped feet kicking away.

"I told you not to swear in public!" Sam hisses, his eyes darting towards the passing dirty looks of passing mothers holding their small children's hands. "Don't blow this Dean, they're going to call security on us-HEY!" Dean takes advantage of his distraction to sink his teeth into the crook of Sam's elbow. Sam barely flinches, but his face hardens.

"Oh, that is it."

Dean lifts his chin in time to see that Sam is ducking into a bathroom. A line of slack-jawed faces by the urinals turn their way as Sam marches in with Dean fighting hard under his arm. Sam yanks a stall door open with a tricky maneuver of his foot, locking it behind him with his free hand.

"Hey, what are you-"

Sam flips Dean over and whacks him hard on his butt. Dean shrieks and squirms, but Sam just settles him more securely on his knee and brings his hand down again. To his horror, Dean can feel tears coming; not because, he'll swear up and down for his entire life, because he can't take it or because he's throwing a tantrum. It's because the sting on the seat of his pants makes crying completely involuntary. Like cutting onions. And Sam's hands are freaking huge, the sasquatch.

"Capital punishment is illegal!" he yells, ignoring the fact that his voice is too high to be doing anything but screaming at this volume.

"Not in this state it's not." Sam says grimly. "I looked it up."

"You looked it up?" Dean screeches in disbelief in between smacks. "You're a sick fuck—OW!"

With one final hard swat, Sam picks him up by the forearms and sets him on his feet. Dean's face is thoroughly reddened from fury, humiliation, and being held upside down.

"Now behave yourself. I mean it." Sam threatens him. He pushes the stall door open and marches Dean out. "Go outside and wait for me."

What else can Dean do? He exits sulkily, rubbing his warmed over bottom through the material of his pants. Behind him he hears Sam's embarrassed apology: "I'm so sorry everyone. He's going through this phase…"

"No problem." a sleepy middle-aged voice agrees over the sounds of pissing. "I'm a father myself. Gotta stay on top a' things."

Dean could refuse to speak to Sam the entire flight as punishment, but he figures that if Sam's going to play dirty, he might as well too.

Instead of harmlessly retreating deeper into his seat every time the plane trembles slightly from the wind, Dean gives into more animal urges to scream, kick the seat in front of him, and press the service button forty times in an hour. Sam and his dreadful parenting skills have earned the life long contempt of the twelve-strong team of stewardesses and all the other passengers before the first in-flight movie is over.

Sam quickly calms him down by dumping both his little bottles of brandy into Dean's plastic cup that's supposed to be for apple juice. Or maybe he just makes some crafty rough calculations about Dean's body mass and upper limit for alcohol tolerance.

Dean wakes up bobbing on Sam's shoulder. Soft dings and messages chime in clear, professional Spanish, and the air is suddenly hotter than he's used to. Sam is maneuvering them both to luggage pick-up. There are caramel-skinned women smiling at him pressing his face into Sam's neck as the carousel starts spitting out suitcases.

"I'm hungry." Dean slurs sleepily, everything forgiven.

Maybe a little mockingly, Sam rubs his back comfortingly. "Yeah, me too. Let's grab our stuff and find something to eat."

* * *

Dean wants to eat from the street vendors but Sam is a worrywort and doesn't want to let him. "Food poisoning." He explains as tries to steer Dean past something spicy and delicious in a grill made out of something that looks like an oil barrel glued to a Roman shield. "I knew this girl in school, her kid almost croaked from tainted lingua while they were on vacation."

Dean stands his ground. "I don't know what a lingua is and I don't want it. I want a taco," he says, almost sticking his finger nearly into a vat of bubbling oil with floating flatbreads turning golden within.

"Those are tortas."

"That's what I said, taco."

"It was a lingua taco that almost killed her kid."

"What the hell is lingua?"

"Cow tongue."

"Oh. Well, I want a beef one."

"Dean…the last time you had a beef taco, you died!"

"What kind of crap is that? I never died from eating a taco!"

Sam groans but jogs up the vendor, a swarthy and busy man flourishing a spatula, and speaks a few words of Spanish. He buys Dean one beef taco to shut him up. Dean heaps spoonfuls of the available tubs of sour cream, lettuce, and tomatillo salsa on top and immediately stuffs it into his mouth. He hums in appreciation of its greasy glory, and the look on Sam's face when it literally pours orange oil and meat juice onto his shirt. Dean wonders if Sam is trying to off him when Sam buys another three for him. But then Sam gets two chicken and four pork ones for himself and they scarf them down together in the shade of a tin awning. Neither of them suffer body malfunctions. Not from the tacos, anyways.

* * *

Sam had been sure that having to pack Dean onto a plane twice would be the most excruciating part of accompanying Dean on his stint as Benjamin Button. He's a bit anxious about how rare axolotls are nowadays, but hey, there's got to be someone who studies the things who knows where they hang out. And thankfully they're allowed to search anytime during the moonphase, not just at night. Since it's an hour into nightfall by the time he and Dean make it to their hotel (same chintzy decorations, only with more animals in sombreros), he makes an executive decision to take a night to rest. After all, Dean's just finished with his freak-out leg of the trip. If he gets a few hours to wind down, Sam is sure that he'll be able to put in a good effort helping Sam finish this thing tomorrow.

Unfortunately, Sam is soul-crushingly wrong.

When he comes back with dinner, Sam walks in on Dean undulating around on the floor. Undulating. There really is no other word to describe what he's doing.

"Dean, what are you doing?"

Dean doesn't answer but continues flopping. In the half of the time where he's face up, Sam sees that his face has a big grin on it. It's the most disturbingly happy leer Sam has ever seen on his brother's face, this age or any other.

Sam tries questioning him about whether he took something while Sam was away, but Dean ignores him. He lolls right around Sam's hands checking for a fever, which he doesn't have, and taking his pulse, which is normal. Sam's concerned, of course, but Dean isn't really acting like he's in pain. Not like Sam on demon blood withdrawal. Dean's behavior reminds him of a kitten going wobbly for catnip. He wonders if there's something microbial and enticing in the native air hitting semi-transformed amphibian senses. But Dean's in no immediate danger, at least from what Sam can tell.

"Alright, kiddo." Sam worriedly plucks him up from his earthworm dances. He continues running sinusoid waves through his body in Sam's arms, peacefully oblivious to his brother's presence. Sam deposits Dean onto his bed. Then he throws a blanket over him he doesn't have to look directly at Dean's freaky movements. The hills of Dean under covers are like ships cresting and falling in ocean waves, but at least Sam can't see that creepy smile.

"I'm just going to let you sleep this off, okay? You can tell me in the morning if you've got some kind of…problem. If you can talk. Either way, I'll follow up on it. Night, Dean."

Sam eats his dinner, writes an email to an ecology grad student, gets a satisfyingly prompt return email with an excel document attached, wires the student money from an online account he set up quickly before leaving the States, and goes to bed. He wakes up to an unpleasantly familiar smell and wrinkles his nose. Surreptitiously, he lifts his sheets and looks down. Nope, not him. Then why does the room smell like…?

"DEAN!"

Dean is scrunched up in a ball and shivering white-faced in the corner. All around him are what look like Sam's scattered notes. The purple under his eyes indicate that he clearly hasn't slept the night. Well, it helps. The bigger clue is how there are massive drying white stains all over the furniture and curtains and the walls. Too many to count on two sets on hands. He holds up his hands and yelps as Sam springs out of bed and furiously pounds him with the pillow because there isn't much else either can do.

"You are disgusting! You jacked off all over our room while I was asleep? That is fucking disturbed!"

"I didn't even touch myself!"

"Like hell you didn't! How did you even-"

"After waltzing in courtship, males deposit sperm packets in protected areas for the females to pick up." Dean recites. He bares his teeth at Sam. Sam's arms freeze above his head, pillow angelic and white behind him like a halo. "Sound familiar, Sammy? You wanna explain why you forgot to brief me about axolotl mating season?"

"Oh, right, because it would occur to anyone to warn his brother magically transformed by a Mexican salamander god that he might be shooting off giant wads of jizz in every pocket of free space." Sam shoots back. "What the hell, Dean! You're a decade away from puberty, how did you even get your dick to work?"

"I have no fucking clue. You try doing research while you're-"

"Alright, alright, shut up. Are you…" Sam drops his pillow and makes a curved hand jittery motion that covers conveying the whole of the English language. "…done with that?" Dean nods, and Sam sighs with relief. Growling, repulsed relief. "Go clean up, and I'll get back to you."

Dean is washed off and changed by the time Sam reports back to him. His long brown hair is still the artful work of bedtime turning and tossing and he's still in white sleep shirt and shorts. Dean's glad he's got his priorities straight.

"Axolotls are paedomorphic." Sam addresses his monitor. "That must mean you are too. So even though you've retained juvenile characteristics, your form is sexually mature."

"Sexually mature for what? Girls or lizards or both?"

The look Sam gives him makes Dean quail in his child's small t-shirt.

"We are not finding out." Sam says calmly and collectedly. "Maybe you're reacting to axolotl hormones now that you're in their territory. But this probably isn't going to happen again now that you've…dumped your seasonal load. Let's not worry about it."

Dean doesn't feel like being obedient right now.

"Does this mean if I go into the water today, I might knock up a couple dozen salamander chicks?"

Sam curses energetically the entire day as Dean sits on dry land and watches him upend rocks at every one of the thirty-seven axolotl hotspots. Dean feels a little bad, watching Sam's hands get worn pinker and smoother than the creepy little animal he's hunting down. But he's too young to be a dad.

* * *

The search utterly fails. Sam comes out of the water all cut up and annoyed and goes utterly ballistic when he can't find Dean. He turned his back on him for all of two minutes. He isn't mollified by the offer of sugary bricks colored like the Mexican flag and the Pink Panther dipped in shaved coconut upon Dean's return, either.

"Quit complaining." Dean cuts off Sam's speech about child abductors and how Dean failed high school Spanish. He looks pretty pleased with himself as he sucks on a spoonful of tamarind goo in his cheek. "I need money."

Dean leads Sam to an open-air market were black-market axolotls gambol around in plastic tub. Sam freaks out some more about how Dean spent his money on candy instead of the key of his restoration to adulthood, but since Dean ends up with both anyways, he is unrepentant. Sam confirms with the perplexed Spanish-only merchant that the salamanders were caught this morning and then packs up a couple of unhappy amphibians. He carries the prepared plastic box lined with waterweeds, since Dean's always been responsible about touching fertile females.

Having learned his lesson with the entry flight, Sam liquors Dean up well before they have to go. Dean's been ranting at Sam about being in the homeland of tequila and Sam's uptight ass wasting his one grand opportunity to experience the local specialty. So Sam takes him on a trip to the store and translates his request of recommendation to the clerk. That night he carefully measures out three shots for Dean. Three exactly, to be taken tonight, tomorrow morning, and one right before departing for the airport. But that still leaves a lot in the bottle and Sam's not one to waste, so…

By the end of the night, Sam's named their captive axolotls Mitzi, May, and Mocha, and has decided that he's a cuddler.

"Something's been bothering me ever since you kiddified…Dean, did you know… that you are seriously cute?"

"Sam, let go of me. Sam. I'm gonna fucking step on your nuts if you don't let go of me."

"You do and I'm breaking out the belt."

* * *

"…Huh." Sam says when he lifts the lid. Dean is working on replacing the yellow "Do not trespass" tapes that were threaded across the doorway.

"What?"

"…I kind of forgot that axolotls can be cannibalistic."

Dean's quiet for a second.

"The winner looking okay in there?"

"…Yeah, about that…do you think it'll still count as a replacement for the 'god of youth' if the replacement isn't looking so young any more?"

Sam had read aloud the mechanics of axolotl metamorphosis, of course. The Internet had been awash in information on it. For an event that occurs so infrequently, there were many contentious arguments about iodine, reducing water levels, and reduced lifespan. No one, however, had been much an authority on axolotl ascension to deification. Dean and Sam become the world's foremost experts on what doesn't work.

Bobby says that he'll be happy to babysit next month.

Author's Note: There's no point in telling me that I have a cracked/depraved sense of humor. I know that.


End file.
